Ok so I remember reading somewhere it was against the Geneva Convention to use .50 caliber ammunition against infantry. But I see the Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle and mounted .50 cal's on humvee's obviously being fired at infantry. Whats the truth behind this? Am i wrong somewhere are they not a real army so its ok to use a .50?

I do know that the USA has not signed onto many provisions the EU and Geneva would love to ban. Land minds and cluster bombs come to mind. Thing is, these people would extend wars because they want morality in war. War is one of the most immoral endeavors man participates in, except for self defense.

Ok so I remember reading somewhere it was against the Geneva Convention to use .50 caliber ammunition against infantry. But I see the Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle and mounted .50 cal's on humvee's obviously being fired at infantry. Whats the truth behind this? Am i wrong somewhere are they not a real army so its ok to use a .50?

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Geneva convention doesn't deal with combtants, only with those that are affected but not fighting, which would include wounded and surrendered. A supplement to the Hague addressed chemical and biological weaponary. As Bill alluded, the US calls it's own shots, declaring any organization/process irrelevant, depending on it's needs.

The weapons that are banned are because it is in our interest. We will not use nukes for a first strike. If attacked by nukes we respond with the MAD doctrine. Ditto on chemical weapons, we won't use them first but if attacked with them we will respond in kind.

Geneva wants to outright ban weapons. I don't really see that ever happening.

I don't know specifically what you are talking about, but the idea that something for use in war could be banned by anyone seems rather silly to me. Like war is some kind of game or sport hunt, with rules and such. "oh, you used a 50 cal; 2 more strikes and you lose your war license!" If such a "rule" exists, I doubt anybody follows it; they would be crippling themselves if they did.
"All is fair in love and war"

I've always heard certain bullet types, hollow/soft point, were banned.
I never heard of a specific caliber being banned, but then again, I'm sure there's a lot of things I've never heard of.

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Sniper bullets/calibers are designed for accuracy at distance. Being of smaller caliber but high velocities, they tend to loose much of thier impact energies at distant targets. Thier saving grace is thier explosive dispersions.

@bill and @gerty - You guys may be onto something. I remember the reason the .50 cal gun was banned against infantry is it mamed and didn't kill. So someone would get hit in the arm and loose an arm or shoulder. The reasoning was it either killed or mamed. Didn't really leave many injured or functioning veterans. I may be off base. I just thought this was true back in my cold war days. Now that were actually at war and the .50 is the super gun of the war. I wanna fire one so so bad. I have a lead on firing one too. That and a bunch of fully auto old military guns like a real BAR(drool...) I bet she's expensive to fire! 20 x 30-06 shells in 4 seconds.

yes, i believe there are a number of types of bullets being precisely because of the type of damage that they do to the human body. The ones that I always read about was the hollow-point bullet. Taken out because it maximizes damage to the body. But even though it is not used by the military (?) it is apparently used by the police and sold for other purposes. This is all to make war more humane...

from wiki "There has been much debate over whether the Mk 211 projectile is legal to use against personnel, or if it is strictly anti-matériel ammunition. The International Committee of the Red Cross has sought to have the ammunition banned, due to concern over the incendiary and explosive components and their effect on personnel. Under the St. Petersburg Declaration of 1868 the "military or naval" use of explosive or incendiary projectiles with a mass of under 400 grams is forbidden.[6] Very few nations were parties to the St. Petersburg Declaration, however, and, of course, that Declaration does not govern the conduct of non-signator parties"

We badly need people like Gorchakov and von Bismarck. Is humanity devolving?

I remember reading a story where the US has supposedly developed a type of land mine that is basically chemical in nature, no mechanics. It was designed to look like a turd. If you stepped on it it went off, so far a pretty typical mine. The thing that was unique about it through is after being out for a few weeks it went inert and eventually dissolved. I don't know how true this was, it sounded interesting.

The big reason people want to ban these things is after the war is over they linger, and kids tend to be the biggest victims. This almost seems to be a universal truth. Britain still discovers the occasional WWII bomb now and again.

Perhaps over time we can come up with more ordinance the will become inactive with time as described.

The reason the USA and others dig in their heels is these weapons do something important on the battle field. The idea of ending a war quickly has become a important consideration. During the 14th century something called the 100 year war started, it was murder on civilians.

I don't really see wars going away. In many ways it is like police, not all people are nice or civilized. The quickest way to start a war is to signal you will not defend yourself, a typical human paradox.

It came as a revelation to me, when a retired soldier told me that he had been taught that it is better to wound an enemy soldier than to kill him/her.

Killing an enemy removes one soldier from the battlefield, whereas wounding removes, as a rough average, three. The wounded soldier needs to be rescued, given immediate medical attention and then evacuated. Presumably this also takes a helicopter away from battle duties for a while.

I wonder if this drives weapons research towards the more unpleasant kind of weapons discussed here?

It came as a revelation to me, when a retired soldier told me that he had been taught that it is better to wound an enemy soldier than to kill him/her.

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This is doctrine in a force-on-force ground fight with an enemy that gives a crap about their soldiers. Wound one, you take out 3, since it takes two to pull the one from the battlefield.

The enemies we've fought haven't really cared about their wounded lately. Now, due to the hassle of calling in air support, many units will use a Javelin (Very Advanced Anti-Armor rocket system) on a small force. Same results, maybe a touch less, but $100k more than a bomb. The results are instant, and not 30 minutes away, though.

Incendiaries on humans is about the only "no-no", Napalm, White Phosphorous, etc. Though White Phosphorous is till used for smoke screen and will sometimes accidentally burst above a group of enemies. The reason it isn't used is simply media, showing somebody being burned to death isn't good for careers.

The US hasn't been a party to any convention that limits our abilities, though we had an agreement with Russia on number of live nukes, which helped to end the Cold War. We can use anything we want.

The .50 BMG is one of the standard sniper rifles, with the current world record held by a Canadian using a Tac-50 .50 BMG rifle. 1.54 Miles/2.47km, 2 kills.

Previous record was a US Marine the year before, 1.5 miles/2.43km, also with a .50 BMG, though a different stock and optic were used.

Not many people are only wounded when hit with a .50, unless it only takes off their lower leg/entire arm, which if not quickly treated results in death from blood loss quickly. It is one of the more "humane" ways to make the enemy not want to fight, which is the point of war.

I was told the 50 cal. was to used on "equipment only" in boot-camp, so we were trained to aim for the belt buckle. It's perfectly ok to blast away with a 12 gauge shotgun at point blank range so any limitation in bullet caliber seems silly when your life on the line.

WWII mines are being searched for and detonated before they do any damage all over europe and in the atlantic. Some go off by themselves as their trigger mechanisms age. If the next solution to end new wars quickly is indeed biological (all signs point to that), the whole world is in for an interesting ride. Once started, there is no way to end a war quickly, it has to run its natural course.

"When we fight, the best strategy is to win by intelligence and wisdom, the second is to win by diplomacy then it is to win by battle. The worst strategy is to win by costly city by city fight" Sun Tzu

Biological is a lot like chemical. I doubt any sane country will do it first, but their are a lot of insane ones out there.

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Hell were the ones who invent all this crap. Then 20 years later the tech falls into 2nd and 3rd worlds and is used against us. You see that show on G4 about the bomb disposal team. They blow up an IED and find a PVC pipe from the IED that says "Made in Rochester NY." The soldier said it was most likely stolen from a US base.

Biological has been around for a very long time. We've just learned to tinker with the bugs a bit better, but don't assume the USA has a monopoly on anything, nor did we invent it. During WWI the german side used both gas and bioweapons, or tried to.

@bill and @gerty - You guys may be onto something. I remember the reason the .50 cal gun was banned against infantry is it mamed and didn't kill. So someone would get hit in the arm and loose an arm or shoulder. The reasoning was it either killed or mamed. Didn't really leave many injured or functioning veterans. I may be off base. I just thought this was true back in my cold war days. Now that were actually at war and the .50 is the super gun of the war. I wanna fire one so so bad. I have a lead on firing one too. That and a bunch of fully auto old military guns like a real BAR(drool...) I bet she's expensive to fire! 20 x 30-06 shells in 4 seconds.

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I was lucky enough to get to shoot a cople of Barrett 50's a couple of years ago. They're only about 35 miles doown the road. Very impressive. You can see the muzzle of the second rifle in the lower right side of pic. One rifle was a bolt action, the other a semi-auto.